Hi
@pleasepleaseplease I agree with
@Jessica Booker's points, and I expect
@Ram Sabaratnam and
@Amma Usman will also have very valuable inputs. To elaborate on how I think you could go about making the 'past-focused' why the firm reasons 'future-focused' distinction:
- Some reasons are inherently either past or future focused: if you mention history and prestige or past mandates, that is by its nature a past-focused type of reason. If you mention firm strategy or innovation instead, that is by its nature a future-focused reason.
- In other cases, you can talk about the same fundamental motivations in both a past and future focused manner. For instance, if one of your motivations is the firm's strength in one practice area, you could firstly discuss how the firm has grew the practice over years - what rankings and market recognition have they historically achieved, have they grow teams sizes, won new clients and mandates, improved revenues and so on. Subsequently, in the second answer you can focus on what the firm is looking to do with the practice in the future - are they looking to generally grow it and if so how, and in particular, are they looking to grow it in particular sectors or in specific geographies?
- In the second answer, you are also invited to discuss the 'why you' or 'fit' element a lot more - as such, you could concentrate on explaining your relevant experiences and achievements in a lot more depth.
- In your second answer, you are also invited to discuss what you think you could do in the firm - this is potentially a good opportunity to show off a bit of your commercial awareness. You could write about (i) what types of typical tasks and workstreams you would be excited to be involved in; and (ii) what predicted future developments about the work the firm is doing is exciting for you.
- Finally, the second question specifically directs you to discussing culture and values. As such, even if you do not identify anything special enough about it to merit framing it as a unique selling point reason, you should still consider discussing your overall fit with it. Thus, it may be better not to write a lot about culture/values in the first answer and focus on it in the second one.
If you follow all of these pointers, I think you should be able to minimize overlap and repetition. Finally, I will also emphasize that
you do not need to reach the maximum word count limit in either section. 1500 words is very high, especially given the natural commonalities of the two questions. I think it is likely that the firm is also trying to test you on your ability to be concise and to the point even when not restricted in this regard - as for instance when drafting a contract or a memo, there are no word limits but it is still essential to avoid verbosity. Hence, I would advise you to observe the same norms of brevity in your writing style as if you were writing a response for an application form question with a much lower word count cap.
